Thoughts on Death in Classical Medicine

Death is man’s greatest enemy. Not because it occurs, but because it appears to be what it is not – definitive…that which ultimately defines and restricts the sacredness and worthiness of Life.

We fear becoming the fact of death. We are filled with anguish, as our mind’s words and their expressions fail, as they must, in their attempt to reconcile death with the creative heart of Life itself.

Our anguish with death is its illusion of permanent, definitive non-existence — the final defeat of all that is loved.

Yet even this bitter anguish is the voice of Spirit crying within us. It is the universal protest denying death its dominion.

Anguish is the inner voice of Spirit speaking against a fundamental wrong, an impossibility, something which can’t exist in and for itself, cannot exist as Being within being. If we listen, it will teach us not to fear the shadow but remain in humble awe of life, trust in its vastness of unrestrained expression that is neither controlled nor directed by its most radical changes.

Dead-death, annihilation, is the only thing that was never conceived within the passionate and sensual unfoldings of Creation. It does not belong to its Eternal Beginning. It is a negation of Creation’s deepest motive, Love. It is impossible. Death happens to us, yet in its very hour, it becomes an affirmation of Life itself as eternally worthy and trusting.

Death for the creature is the Face of the Divine, shrouded in His Glory and His Fullness. A Glory which is Darkness to all that is created, for nothing can withstand It, no form can concieve It, nor experience It of it’s own accord. It is the ultimate Gift. The breaking through of every limit, of every movement of time and space to which identity has attached itself. It is the healing of every wound, the revelation of all that has remained hidden from the eyes but held within the heart.

Every form, every feeling and thought, even the most subtle of energies must perish in this Unspeakable, this Unseen Glory of The Divine in order to reach the Fullness of Self- in order to Know itself as it is Known, to Know itself as Eternal.

Though life-death is the living pulse of Creation, its very expression rests within the Other, the truly ultimate — Life.

This ultimacy is a fullness, a completeness, a spontaneous uninhibited participation in Life, that which is hidden in the rhythmic Dance of life-death.

It is what Christians call “Beatific Vision”, and the Buddhists and Hindus call “Release from the Wheel of Dharma”, release from all that restricts the true knowledge and freedom of Being.

It is essential for us to realize that the Beatific Vision and Release are not events restricted to the linear framework of common time, nor states of being, but are simultaneously present in all Time.

The process of dying is that which is always bringing identity beyond its conditional limits. It is a principle hidden in form’s maturation, the fullness of its fruition, the promise of its birth. It teaches us that change and transformation, no matter how radical, is an expression of Life- not ‘deadness’. It provides living with the vision of the sacred, of eternal Worthiness. Without this pulse of life-death there would be no life, no metabolism, nothing growing, developing and transforming- no life to be affirmed in the reaches of the heart. Life does not conquer death- it uses it.

Life’s enemy is not death, but that which is expressed in Sanskrit as avidya, what the Buddhists and Hindus call Ignorance, and the Christians call Original Sin; the shadows of the mind clouding the clarity of consciousness- the cause of all suffering.

We are not defined by life-death but by Life. This is the always Now — the warp and weave of Creation constantly fulfilling itself.

Man drifts as one lost in a stream of desires that remain constantly before him, his purposes but half seen,

a reaching for meaning that remains clouded by the promise of death.

Yet his surest instincts have always told him that a devout integrity and a sacred dignity flow in the movement of each of his limbs and speaks in his deepest feelings.

He ultimately opposes the finality of death not through fear, but through the irresistible witness of the Spirit.

The vision of the Eternal is a Wisdom of the heart, not the intellect, and is reflected as the mystery of communion with all Creation, the verity of Being.

Healthy Solutions

David is the author of the book Healthy Solutions, a guide to Simple Healing and Healthy Wisdom.